There are currently different systems and methods allowing for the management, planning and recording of the reservation of shared spaces or resources such as rooms or shared desks for example, in buildings such as office buildings, offices, conference centers and other buildings where the shared spaces can be booked for use by different users. These systems often comprise a central server which receives all booking requests and which enables visualizing the state of booking and of occupation of the shared spaces, from one or more workstations.
Booking information, once it is stored in the central server, must be distributed in order to be available at the corresponding premises, namely close to the shared spaces. In addition, the information should be updated if possible in real time or at least with a small time lag in order to closely reflect the reality.
This updating of information is generally very tedious. Indeed, it often happens in practice that the actual occupation of a shared space does not correspond to the occupation as it was intended and as stored in the central server. This may arise in particular because some planned meetings are canceled without the central server being informed, because some meetings last longer than expected, which requires use of the shared space longer than the length of booking, or otherwise, because a meeting lasts less time than expected and therefore the booked shared space is free and available sooner than expected.
Different systems have been developed and implemented to try to solve the problems described above. In such systems, display screens are placed close to the shared spaces for which the booking is to be managed. These screens communicate with the central server and are usually able to display the part of the content of the central server concerning the shared space close to which they are placed.
Most of the existing systems have several drawbacks. As the screen is often formed of a touch pad, it provides access to several functions. As a corollary, these devices can often be complex to use. Moreover, they are generally relatively expensive.
Another disadvantage is that these screens are big energy consumers. Therefore, they usually require a cabled power supply. Such a power supply may be provided during the construction of a building, but it is economically less interesting when an existing building has to be equipped if the wiring required for powering the screens was not taken into account at the time the building was designed.
A screen of the type mentioned above is described in the International application WO 2010/151211. In this document, a display device is connected to a scheduling server which is responsible for the management of resources such as a shared space. This display device receives messages from the scheduling server and updates the display if necessary. This display device may also send messages to the scheduling server to confirm that a meeting began for example.
The proposed display device as well as the communication means are high consumption systems. Therefore, the display must be wired to be used in practice.
Because of the different functions available, these screens can be interesting to be used as standalone devices, that is to say, even beyond the reach of the central server. It follows that there is a risk of theft. It is therefore prudent to provide fastening systems that reduce this risk, but that again increase installation costs.
These various disadvantages imply that in practice, such display devices are not commonly used.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,185,762 describes a room management system that uses low-energy screens requiring no cabled power supply. The main feature of the system described in this US patent is that the screens are powered by energy harvesting. Due to the energy sources used, it is not possible to obtain sufficient power to use communication protocols requiring a lot of energy, such as, for example the widely adopted WiFi protocol. It is therefore necessary to use another dedicated communication protocol, which will often require the installation of a specific wireless infrastructure with dedicated base-stations and antennas. This makes the system very inflexible.
Other publications describe inventions aimed at solving the above mentioned problems. One of them is the European application EP 2 479 958. This document describes a system comprising a registration device and a management unit. The system further comprises a mobile handset that is used for indicating that a participant of a meeting has checked in to a scheduled meeting. This document does not deal with the optimization of energy consumption.
The document WO 2003/003613 describes a system for remotely controlling a distributed network of signs. The signs are displayed on a plurality of low power consuming electronic display devices. According to this document, the electronic components must be powered by a power supply “sufficient to meet the power requirements of the display driver, the communication device and the microcontroller”.
The developments described in the above document concern, for the most part, the optimization of the power supply to meet the above mentioned requirement. However, the document does not provide for communication from the display devices to the server.
None of the documents summarized above describes a system for managing in a practical and efficient way, the occupation of shared spaces, practical and efficient meaning among others, that there is no need for a complex installation of the display devices.